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THE THREE TAVERNS 



^^^^ 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

POEMS 

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 

CAPTAIN CRAIC 

THE TOWN DOV^^ THE RIVER 

THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY 

MERLIN 

LANCELOT 

PLAYS 

VAN ZORN. A Comedy in Three Acts 

THE PORCUPINE. A Drama in Three 

Acts 



' THE THREE TAVERNS 

A BOOK OF POEMS 



BY 
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON '' 

Author of "The Man Against the Sky," 
"Merlin, A Poem," etc. 



iQeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1920 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1920, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published, June, 1920 



■0 iij'dij \S^ 

©GLA576283 " 



THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY 
AND LILLA CABOT PERRY 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Valley of the Shadow 1 

The Wandering Jew 7 

Neighbors 11 

The Mill 12 

The Dark Hills 13 

The Three Taverns 14 

Demos 27 

The Flying Dutchman 29 

Tact 30 

On the Way 31 

John Brown 44 

The False Gods 52 

Archibald's Example 55 

London Bridge 56 

Tasker Norcross 67 

A Song at Shannon's 79 

Souvenir 80 

Discovery 81 

Firelight 82 

The New Tenants 83 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Inferential 84 

The Eat 85 

Rahel to Varnhagen .86 

NiMMO 96 

Peace on Earth 100 

Late Summer 103 

An Evangelist's Wife 106 

The Old King's New Jester 107 

Lazarus 109 



Several poems included in this book appeared originally 
in American periodicals, as follows: The Three Taverns, 
London Bridge, A Song at Shannon's, The New Tenants, 
Discovery, John Brown, in The Lyric; Archibald's Exam- 
ple, The Valley of the Shadow, in The Atlantic Monthly; 
Nimmo, in Scrihner's; The Wandering Jew, Souvenir, in 
The Outlook; Neighbors, Tact, in The Yale Review; Demos, 
in The North American Review; The Mill, An Evangelist's 
Wife, in The New Republic; Firelight, in Youth; Late 
Summer, in Contemporary Verse; Inferential, in The Dial; 
The Flying Dutchman, in The Nation; On the Way, The 
False Gods, in The New York Sun; Peace on Earth, in Col- 
lier's Weekly; The Old King's New Jester, in The Boston 
Transcript. 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

There were faces to remember in the Valley of the 

Shadow, 
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to 

forget ; 
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few 

forgotten ashes, 
There were sparks of recognition that are not for- 
gotten yet. 
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming 

indignation 
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed 

it thus. 
They were lost and unacquainted — till they found 

themselves in others. 
Who had groped as they were groping where dim 

ways were perilous. 

There were lives that were as dark as are the fears 

and intuitions 
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with 

what he knows; 

[1] 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

There were pensioners of dreams and there were 

debtors of illusions, 
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only 

grows. 
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held 

not wine or water, 
And had no names in traffic or more value there 

than toys: 
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley 

of the Shadow, 
Where they suffered and still wondered why their 

wonder made no noise. 

There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a 

precedent unbroken, 
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable 

schemes, 
Which had been, before the cradle, Time's inexor- 
able tenants 
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father's 

dreams. 
There were these, and there were many who had 

stumbled up to manhood. 
Where they saw too late the road they should have 

taken long ago : 
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the 

Valley of the Shadow, 
The commemorative wreckage of what others did 

not know. 

[2] 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

And there were daughters older than the mothers 

who had borne them, 
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than 

the earth; 
And they were going forward only farther into 

darkness. 
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their 

birth; 
And among them, giving always what was not for 

their possession, 
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in 

their eyes; 
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley 

of the Shadow, 
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice. 



There were creepers among catacombs where dull 

regrets were torches, 
Giving light enough to show them what was there 

upon the shelves — 
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure 

would remember 
Of something that had been alive and once had been 

themselves. 
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid 

imprecation. 
While as many fled repentance for the promise of 

despair : 

[3] 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley 

of the Shadow, 
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had 

led them there. 



There were some who knew the steps of Age in- 
credibly beside them, 
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt 

the wheel ; 
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup 

of nothing. 
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have 

come to steal. 
Long and often had they figured for a larger 

valuation, 
But the size of their addition was the balance of a 

doubt : 
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of 

the Shadow, 
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and 

played out. 



And among the dark endurances of unavowed 

reprisals 
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but 

saw well; 

[4] 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

And over beauty's aftermath of hazardous 

ambitions 
There were tears for what had vanished as they 

vanished where they felL 
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry 

for the nameless, 
There were some whose only passion was for Time 

who made them cold: 
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of 

the Shadow, 
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when 

they were old. 

Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of 

common sorrow, 
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of 

a smile; 
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of 

human embers. 
Having covered thus a treasure that would last 

him for a while. 
There were many by the presence of the many 

disaffected, 
Whose exemption was included in the weight that 

others bore: 
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of 

the Shadow, 
And they alone were there to find what they were 

looking for. 

[5] 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 

So they were, and so they are; and as they came 

are coming others, 
And among them are the fearless and the meek and 

the unborn; 
And a question that has held us heretofore without 

an answer 
May abide without an answer until all have ceased 

to mourn. 
For the children of the dark are more to name than 

are the wretched, 
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the 

shamed : 
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of 

the Shadow, 
And among them are the dying and the blinded 

and the maimed. 



[6] 



THE WANDERING JEW 

I SAW by looking in his eyes 
That they remembered everything; 
And this was how I came to know 
That he was here, still wandering. 
For though the figure and the scene 
"Were never to be reconciled, 
I knew the man as I had known 
His image when I was a child. 

With evidence at every turn, 

I should have held it safe to guess 

That all the newness of New York 

Had nothing new in loneliness ; 

Yet here was one who might be Noah, 

Or Nathan, or Abimelech, 

Or Lamech, out of ages lost, — 

Or, more than all, Melchizedek. 

Assured that he was none of these, 
I gave them back their names again, 
To scan once more those endless eyes 
Where all my questions ended then. 
I found in them what they revealed 
That I shall not live to forget, 
[7] 



THE WANDERING JEW 

And wondered if they found in mine 
Compassion that I might regret. 

Pity, I learned, was not the least 
Of time's offending benefits 
That had now for so long impugned 
The conservation of his wits : 
Kather it was that I should yield, 
Alone, the fealty that presents 
The tribute of a tempered ear 
To an untempered eloquence. 

Before I pondered long enough 
On whence he came and who he was, 
I trembled at his ringing wealth 
Of manifold anathemas ; 
I wondered, while he seared the world, 
What new defection ailed the race. 
And if it mattered how remote 
Our fathers were from such a place. 

Before there was an hour for me 
To contemplate with less concern 
The crumbling realm awaiting us 
Than his that was beyond return, 
A dawning on the dust of years 
Had shaped with an elusive light 
Mirages of remembered scenes 
That were no longer for the sight. 
[8] 



THE WANDERING JEW 

For now the gloom that hid the man 
Became a daylight on his wrath, 
And one wherein my fancy viewed 
New lions ramping in his path. 
The old were dead and had no fangs, 
Wherefore he loved them — seeing not 
They were the same that in their time 
Had eaten everything they caught. 

The world around him was a gift 
Of anguish to his eyes and ears, 
And one that he had long reviled 
As fit for devils, not for seers. 
Where, then, was there a place for him 
That on this other side of death 
Saw nothing good, as he had seen 
No good come out of Nazareth? 

Yet here there was a reticence, 
And I believe his only one. 
That hushed him as if he beheld 
A Presence that would not be gone. 
In such a silence he confessed 
How much there was to be denied; 
And he would look at me and live, 
As others might have looked and died. 

As if at last he knew again 
That he had always known, his eyes 
[9] 



THE WANDERING JEW 

Were like to those of one who gazed 
On those of One who never dies. 
For such a moment he revealed 
What life has in it to be lost; 
And I could ask if what I saw, 
Before me there, was man or ghost. 

He may have died so many times 
That all there was of him to see 
Was pride, that kept itself alive 
As too rebellious to be free; 
He may have told, when more than once 
Humility seemed imminent. 
How many a lonely time in vain 
The Second Coming came and went. 

Whether he still defies or not 
The failure of an angry task 
That relegates him out of time 
To chaos, I can only ask. 
But as I knew him, so he was; 
And somewhere among men to-day 
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, 
And flinch — and look the other way. 



[10] 



NEIGHBORS 

As often as we thought of her, 

We thought of a gray life 
That made a quaint economist 

Of a wolf -haunted wife; 
We made the best of all she bore 

That was not ours to bear, 
And honored her for wearing things 

That were not things to wear. 

There was a distance in her look 

That made us look again; 
And if she smiled, we might believe 

That we had looked in vain. 
Rarely she came inside our doors, 

And had not long to stay ; 
And when she left, it seemed somehow 

That she was far away. 

At last, when we had all forgot 

That all is here to change, 
A shadow on the commonplace 

Was for a moment strange. 
Yet there was nothing for surprise, 

Nor much that need be told : 
Love, with his gift of pain, had given 

More than one heart could hold. 
[11] 



THE MILL 

The miller's wife had waited long, 

The tea was cold, the fire was dead; 
And there might yet be nothing wrong 

In how he went and what he said: 
*' There are no millers any more," 

Was all that she had heard him say ; 
And he had lingered at the door 

So long that it seemed yesterday. 

Sick with a fear that had no form 

She knew that she was there at last; 
And in the mill there was a warm 

And mealy fragrance of the past. 
What else there was would onl}^ seem 

To say again what he had meant; 
And what was hanging from a beam 

Would not have heeded where she went. 

And if she thought it followed her, 

She may have reasoned in the dark 
That one way of the few there were 

Would hide her and would leave no mark 
Black water, smooth above the weir 

Like starrj^ velvet in the night, 
Though ruffled once, would soon appear 

The same as ever to the sight. 

[12] 



THE DARK HILLS 

Dark hills at evening in the west, 
Where sunset hovers like a sound 
Of golden horns that sang to rest 
Old bones of warriors under ground, 
Far now from all the bannered ways 
Where flash the legions of the sun, 
You fade — as if the last of days 
Were fading, and all wars were done. 



[18]1 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us 
far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns. 

(Acts xxviii, 15) 

Herodion, Apelles, Amplias, 
And Andronicus? Is it you I see — 
At last ? And is it you now that are gazing 
As if in doubt of me ? Was I not saying 
That I should come to Rome ? I did say that ; 
And I said furthermore that I should go 
On westward, where the gateway of the world 
Lets in the central sea. I did say that, 
But I say only, now, that I am Paul — 
A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord 
A voice made free. If there be time enough 
To live, I may have more to tell you then 
Of western matters. I go now to Rome, 
Where Caesar waits for me, and I shall wait, 
And Caesar knows how long. In C^sarea 
There was a legend of Agrippa saying 
In a light way to Festus, having heard 
My deposition, that I might be free. 
Had I stayed free of Caesar ; but the word 
Of God would have it as you see it is — 
And here I am. The cup that I shall drink 
[14] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

Is mine to drink — the moment or the place 

Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome, 

Be it now in Rome ; and if your faith exceed 

The shadow cast of hope, say not of me 

Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck. 

And all the many deserts I have crossed 

That are not named or regioned, have undone 

Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing 

The part of me that is the least of me. 

You see an older man than he who fell 

Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus, 

Where the great light came down ; yet I am he 

That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard. 

And I am here, at last ; and if at last 

I give myself to make another crumb 

For this pernicious feast of time and men — 

Well, I have seen too much of time and men 

To fear the ravening or the wrath of either. 

Yes, it is Paul you see — the Saul of Tarsus 
That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain 
For saying Something was beyond the Law, 
And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul 
Upon the Law till I went famishing. 
Not knowing that I starved. How should I know, 
More then than any, that the food I had — 
What else it may have been — was not for me ? 
My fathers and their fathers and their fathers 
Had found it good, and said there was no other, 

[15] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

And I was of the line. When Stephen fell, 
Among the stones that crushed his life away, 
There was no place alive that I could see 
For such a man. Why should a man be given 
To live beyond the Law ? So I said then. 
As men say now to me. How then do I 
Persist in living ? Is that what you ask ? 
If so, let my appearance be for you 
No living answer ; for Time writes of death 
On men before they die, and what you see 
Is not the man. The man that you see not — 
The man within the man — is most alive ; 
Though hatred would have ended, long ago. 
The bane of his activities. I have lived, 
Because the faith within me that is life 
Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late. 
Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me 
My toil is over and my work begun. 

How often, and how many a time again, 
Have I said I should be with you in Rome ! 
He who is always coming never comes. 
Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves; 
And I may tell you now that after me, 
Whether I stay for little or for long. 
The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them, 
And a more careful ear for their confusion 
Than you need have much longer for the sound 
Of what I tell you — should I live to say 
More than I say to Cassar. What I know 
[16] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

Is down for you to read in what is written j 
And if I cloud a little with my own 
Mortality the gleam that is immortal, 
I do it only because I am I — 
Being on earth and of it, in so far 
As time flays yet the remnant. This you know ; 
And if I sting men, as I do sometimes, 
With a sharp word that hurts, it is because 
Man's habit is to feel before he sees ; 
And I am of a race that feels. Moreover, 
The world is here for what is not yet here 
For more than are a few ; and even in Rome, 
Where men are so enamored of the Cross 
That fame has echoed, and increasingly. 
The music of your love and of your faith 
To foreign ears that are as far away 
As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder 
How much of love you know, and if your faith 
Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember 
Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least 
A Law to make them sorry they were born 
If they go long without it ; and these Gentiles, 
For the first time in shrieking history, 
Have love and law together, if so they will. 
For their defense and their immunity 
In these last days. Rome, if I know the name, 
Will have anon a crown of thorns and fire 
Made ready for the w^'eathing of new masters, 
Of whom we are appointed, you and I, — 
[17] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

And you are still to be when I am gone, 
Should I go presently. Let the word fall, 
Meanwhile, upon the dragon-ridden field 
Of circumstance, either to live or die ; 
Concerning which there is a parable, 
Made easy for the comfort and attention 
Of those who preach, fearing they preach in vain. 
You are to plant, and then to plant again 
Where you have gathered, gathering as you go ; 
For you are in the fields that are eternal, 
And you have not the burden of the Lord 
Upon your mortal shoulders. What you have 
Is a light yoke, made lighter by the wearing, 
Till it shall have the wonder and the weight 
Of a clear jewel, shining with a light 
Wherein the sun and all the fiery stars 
May soon be fading. When Gamaliel said 
That if they be of men these things are nothing. 
But if they be of God they are for none 
To overthrow, he spoke as a good Jew, 
And one who stayed a Jew ; and he said all. 
And you know, by the temper of your faith, 
How far the fire is in you that I felt 
Before I knew Damascus. A word here. 
Or there, or not there, or not anywhere. 
Is not the Word that lives and is the life ; 
And you, therefore, need weary not yourselves 
With jealous aches of others. If the world 
[18] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

Were not a world of aches and innovations, 

Attainment would have no more joy of it. 

There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds, 

And schisms in schisms ; myriads will be done 

To death because a farthing has two sides, 

And is at last a farthing. Telling you this, 

I, who bid men to live, appeal to Caesar. 

Once I had said the ways of God were dark, 

Meaning by that the dark ways of the Law. 

Such is the glory of our tribulations ; 

For the Law kills the flesh that kills the Law, 

And we are then alive. We have eyes then ; 

And we have then the Cross between two worlds — 

To guide us, or to blind us for a time, 

Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites 

A few on highways, changing all at once, 

Is not for all. The power that holds the world 

Away from God that holds himself away — 

Farther away than all your works and words 

Are like to fly without the wings of faith — 

Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard 

Enlivening the ways of easy leisure 

Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes 

Have wisdom, we see more than we remember ; 

And the old world of our captivities 

May then become a smitten glimpse of ruin, 

Like one where vanished hewers have had their day 

Of wrath on Lebanon. Before we see, 

[19] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

Meanwhile, we suffer; and I come to yon, 
At last, through many storms and through much 
night. 

Yet whatsoever I have undergone, 

My keepers in this instance are not hard. 

But for the chance of an ingratitude, 

I might indeed be curious of their mercy. 

And fearful of their leisure while I wait, 

A few leagues out of Rome. Men go to Rome, 

Not always to return — but not that now. 

Meanwhile, I seem to think you look at me 

With eyes that are at last more credulous 

Of my identity. You remark in me 

No sort of leaping giant, though some words 

Of mine to you from Corinth may have leapt 

A little through your eyes into your soul. 

I trust they were alive, and are alive 

Today ; for there be none that shall indite 

So much of nothing as the man of words 

Who writes in the Lord's name for his name's sake 

And has not in his blood the fire of time 

To warm eternity. Let such a man — 

If once the light is in him and endures — 

Content himself to be the general man, 

Set free to sift the decencies and thereby 

To learn, except he be one set aside 

For sorrow, more of pleasure than of pain ; 

Though if his light be not the light indeed, 

[20] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

But a brief shine that never really was, 

And fails, leaving him worse than where he was, 

Then shall he be of all men destitute. 

And here were not an issue for much ink, 

Or much offending faction among scribes. 

The Kingdom is within us, we are told ; 

And when I say to you that we possess it 

In such a measure as faith makes it ours, 

I say it with a sinner's privilege 

Of having seen and heard, and seen again, 

After a darkness; and if I affirm 

To the last hour that faith affords alone 

The Kingdom entrance and an entertainment, 

I do not see myself as one who says 

To man that he shall sit with folded hands 

Against the Coming. If I be anything, 

I move a driven agent among my kind. 

Establishing by the faith of Abraham, 

And by the grace of their necessities. 

The clamoring word that is the word of life 

Nearer than heretofore to the solution 

Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed 

A shaft of language that has flown sometimes 

A little higher than the hearts and heads 

Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard, 

Like a new song that waits for distant ears. 

I cannot be the man that I am not ; 

And while I own that earth is my affliction, 

[21] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

I am a man of earth, who says not all 

To all alike. That were impossible, 

Even as it were so that He should plant 

A larger garden first. But you today 

Are for the larger sowing; and your seed, 

A little mixed, will have, as He foresaw. 

The foreign harvest of a wider growth, 

And one without an end. Many there are. 

And are to be, that shall partake of it. 

Though none may share it with an understanding 

That is not his alone. We are all alone ; 

And yet we are all parcelled of one order — 

Jew, Gentile, or barbarian in the dark 

Of wildernesses that are not so much 

As names yet in a book. And there are many, 

Finding at last that words are not the Word, 

And finding only that, will flourish aloft. 

Like heads of captured Pharisees on pikes. 

Our contradictions and discrepancijes ; 

And there are many more will hang themselves 

Upon the letter, seeing not in the Word 

The friend of all who fail, and in their faith 

A sword of excellence to cut them down. 

As long as there are glasses that are dark — 
And there are many — we see darkly through them ; 
All which have I conceded and set down 
In words that have no shadow. What is dark 
Is dark, and we may not say otherwise ; 
[22] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

Yet what may be as dark as a lost fire 

For one of us, may still be for another 

A coming gleam across the gulf of ages, 

And a way home from shipwreck to the shore; 

And so, through pangs and ills and desperations, 

There may be light for all. There shall be light. 

As much as that, you know. You cannot say 

This woman or that man will be the next 

On whom it falls; you are not here for that. 

Your ministration is to be for others 

The firing of a rush that may for them 

Be soon the fire itself. The few at first 

Are fighting for the multitude at last ; 

Therefore remember what Gamaliel said 

Before you, when the sick were lying down 

In streets all night for Peter's passing shadow. 

Fight, and say what you feel ; say more than words. 

Give men to know that even their days of earth 

To come are more than ages that are gone. 

Say what you feel, while you have time to say it. 

Eternity will answer for itself, 

Without your intercession ; yet the way 

For many is a long one, and as dark, 

Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil 

Too much, and if I be away from you, 

Think of me as a brother to yourselves. 

Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics. 

And give your left hand to grammarians ; 

And when you seem, as many a time you may, 

[23] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

To have no other friend than hope, remember 
That you are not the first, or yet the last. 

The best of life, until we see beyond 
The shadows of ourselves (and they are less 
Than even the blindest of indignant eyes 
Would have them) is in what we do not know. 
Make, then, for all your fears a place to sleep 
With all your faded sins ; nor think yourselves 
Egregious and alone for your defects 
Of youth and yesterday. I was young once ; 
And there's a question if you played the fool 
With a more fervid and inherent zeal 
Than I have in my story to remember, 
Or gave your necks to folly's conquering foot, 
Or flung yourselves with an unstudied aim, 
Less frequently than I. Never mind that. 
Man's little house of days will hold enough, 
Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, 
But it will not hold all. Things that are dead 
Are best without it, and they own their death 
By virtue of their dying. Let them go, — 
But think you not the world is ashes yet. 
And you have all the fire. The world is here 
Today, and it may not be gone tomorrow ; 
For there are millions, and there may be more, 
To make in turn a various estimation 
Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps 
Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears 
[24] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them. 
And then they shall hear strangely. INIany with 

eyes 
That are incredulous of the Mystery 
Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read 
Where language has an end and is a veil, 
Not woven of our words. Many that hate 
Their kind are soon to know that without love 
Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing. 
I that have done some hating in my time 
See now no time for hate ; I that have left, 
Fading behind me like familiar lights 
That are to shine no more for my returning, 
Home, friends, and honors, — I that have lost all else 
For wisdom, and the wealth of it, say now 
To you that out of wisdom has come love. 
That measures and is of itself the measure 
Of works and hope and faith. Your longest hours 
Are not so long that you may torture them 
And harass not yourselves ; and the last days 
Are on the way that you prepare for them, 
And was prepared for you, here in a world 
Where you have sinned and suffered, striven and 

seen. 
If you be not so hot for counting them 
Before they come that you consume yourselves, 
Peace may attend you all in these last days — 
And me, as well as you. Yes, even in Rome. 
Well, I have talked and rested, though I fear 

[25] 



THE THREE TAVERNS 

My rest has not been yours ; in which event, 

Forgive one who is only seven leagues 

From Caesar. When I told you I should come, 

I did not see myself the criminal 

You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law 

That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed, 

Was good of you, and I shall not forget ; 

No, I shall not forget you came so far 

To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell. 

They come to tell me I am going now — 

With them. I hope that we shall meet again. 

But none may say what he shall find in Rome. 



[26] 



DEMOS 
I 

All you that are enamored of my name 

And least intent on what most I require, 
Beware ; for my design and your desire, 

Deplorably, are not as yet the same. 

Beware, I say, the failure and the shame 

Of losing that for which you now aspire 
So blindly, and of hazarding entire 

The gift that I was bringing when I came. 

Give as I will, I cannot give you sight 

Whereby to see that with you there are some 
To lead you, and be led. But they are dumb 

Before the wrangling and the shrill delight 
Of your deliverance that has not come. 

And shall not, if I fail you — as I might. 



[27] 



DEMOS 
II 

So little have you seen of what awaits 
Your fevered glimpse of a democracy 
Confused and foiled with an equality 

Not equal to the envy it creates, 

That you see not how near you are the gates 
Of an old king who listens fearfully 
To you that are outside and are to be 

The noisy lords of imminent estates. 

Rather be then your prayer that you shall have 
Your kingdom undishonored. Having all, 
See not the great among you for the small, 

But hear their silence ; for the few shall save 
The many, or the many are to fall — 

Still to be wrangling in a noisy grave. 



[28] 



THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 

Unyielding in the pride of his defiance, 
Afloat with none to serve or to command, 

Lord of himself at last, and all by Science, 
He seeks the Vanished Land. 

Alone, by the one light of his one thought. 

He steers to find the shore from which we came, — 

Fearless of in what coil he may be caught 
On seas that have no name. 

Into the night he sails ; and after night 
There is a dawning, though there be no sun; 

Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight. 
Unsighted, he sails on. 

At last there is a lifting of the cloud 

Between the flood before him and the sky; 

And then — though he may curse the Power aloud 
That has no power to di< 



He steers himself away from what is haunted 
By the old ghost of what has been before,- 

Abandoning, as always, and undaunted, 
One fog-walled island more. 

[29] 



TACT 

Observant of the way she told 

So much of what was true, 
No vanity could long withhold 

Regard that was her due : 
She spared him the familiar guile, 

So easily achieved, 
That only made a man to smile 

And left him undeceived. 

Aware that all imagining 

Of more than what she meant 
Would urge an end of everything, 

He stayed ; and when he went, 
They parted with a merry word 

That was to him as light 
As any that was ever heard 

Upon a starry night. 

She smiled a little, knowing well 

That he would not remark 
The ruins of a day that fell 

Around her in the dark: 
He saw no ruins anywhere, 

Nor fancied there were scars 
On anyone who lingered there, 

Alone below the stars. 

[30] 



ON THE WAY 

(Philadelphia, 1794) 

Note. — The following imaginary dialogue between Alex- 
ander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon 
any specific incident in American history, may be supposed 
to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton's re- 
tirement from Washington's Cabinet in 1795 and a few 
years before the political ingenuities of Burr — who has 
been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the in- 
ventor of American politics — began to be conspicuously 
formidable to the Federalists. These activities on the part 
of Burr resulted, as the reader will remember, in the Burr- 
Jefferson tie for the Presidency in 1800, and finally in the 
Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken in 1804. 

Burr 

Hamilton, if he rides you down, remember 

That I was here to speak, and so to save 

Your fabric from catastrophe. That's good; 

For I perceive that you observe him also. 

A President, a-riding of his horse, 

May dust a General and be forgiven ; 

But why be dusted — when we're all alike, 

All equal, and all happy. Here he comes — 

And there he goes. And we, by your new patent, 

Would seem to be two kings here by the wayside, 

[31] 



ON THE WAY 

AVith our two hats off to his Excellency. 
Why not his Majesty, and done with it? 
Forgive me if I shook your meditation, 
But you that weld our credit should have eyes 
To see what's coming. Bury me first if 1 do. 

Hamilton 

There 's always in some pocket of your brain 

A, care for me ; wherefore my gratitude 

For your attention is commensurate 

With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings ; 

We are as royal as two ditch-diggers ; 

But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days 

When first a few seem all ; but if we live. 

We may again be seen to be the few 

That we have always been. These are the days 

When men forget the stars, and are forgotten. 

Burr 

But why forget them? They're the same that 

winked 
Upon the world when Alcibiades 
Cut off his dog's tail to induce distinction. 
There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades 
Is not forgotten. 

Hamilton 

Yes, there are dogs enough, 
God knows ; and I can hear them in my dreams. 

[32] 



ON THE WAY 

Burr 

Never a doubt. But what you hear the most 
Is your new music, something out of tune 
With your intention. How in the name of Cain, 
I seem to hear you ask, are men to dance, 
When all men are musicians. Tell me that, 
I hear you saying, and 1 11 tell you the name 
Of Samson's mother. But why shroud yourself 
Before the coffin comes? For all you know, 
The tree that is to fall for your last house 
Is now a sapling. You may have to wait 
So long as to be sorry ; though I doubt it, 
For you are not at home in your new Eden 
Where chilly whispers of a likely frost 
Accumulate already in the air. 
I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, 
W^ould be for you in your autumnal mood 
A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders. 

Hamilton 

If so it is you think, you may as well 

Give over thinking. We are done with ermine. 

What I fear most is not the multitude, 

But those who are to loop it with a string 

That has one end in France and .one end here. 

I 'm not so fortified with observation 

That I could swear that more than half a score 

Among us who see lightning see that ruin 

[33] 



ON THE WAY 

Is not the work of thunder. Since the world 
Was ordered, there was never a long pause 
For caution between doing and undoing. 

Burr 

Go on, sir ; my attention is a trap 
Set for the catching of all compliments 
To Monticello, and all else abroad 
That has a name or an identity. 

Hamilton 

I leave to you the names — there are too many ; 

Yet one there is to sift and hold apart, 

As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer 

That is not always clouded, or too late. 

But I was near and young, and had the reins 

To play with while he manned a team so raw 

That only God knows where the end had been 

Of all that riding without Washington. 

There was a nation in the man who passed us. 

If there was not a world. I may have driven 

Since then some restive horses, and alone. 

And through a splashing of abundant mud; 

But he who made the dust that sets you on 

To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry, 

And in a measure safe. 



[34] 



ON THE WAY 

Burr 

Here's a new tune 
From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once, 
And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle 1 
I have forgotten what my father said 
When I was born, but there 's a rustling of it 
Among my memories, and it makes a noise 
About as loud as all that I have held 
And fondled heretofore of your same caution. 
But that's affairs, not feelings. If our friends 
Guessed half we say of them, our enemies 
Would itch in our friends' jackets. Howsoever, 
The world is of a sudden on its head, 
And all are spilled — unless you cling alone 
With Washington. Ask Adams about that. 

Hamilton 

We'll not ask Adams about anything. 
We fish for lizards when we choose to ask 
For what we know already is not coming, 
And we must eat the answer. Where 's the use 
Of asking when this man says everything, 
With all his tongues of silence ? 

Burr 

I dare say. 
I dare say, but I won't. One of those tongues 

[35] 



ON THE WAY 

I '11 borrow for the nonce. He '11 never miss it. 
We mean his Western Majesty, King George. 

Hamilton 

I mean the man who rode by on his horse. 
I'll beg of you the meed of your indulgence 
If I should say this planet may have done 
A deal of weary whirling when at last, 
If ever, Time shall aggregate again 
A majesty like his that has no name. 

Burr 

Then you concede his Majesty? That's good, 
And what of yours? Here are two majesties. 
Favor the Left a little, Hamilton, 
Or you '11 be floundering in the ditch that waits 
For riders who forget where they are riding. 
If we and France, as you anticipate, 
Must eat each other, what C^sar, if not yourself, 
Do you see for the master of the feast? 
There may be a place waiting on your head 
For laurel thick as Nero 's. You don 't know. 
I have not crossed your glory, though I might 
If I saw thrones at auction. 

Hamilton 

Yes, you might. 
If war is on the way, I shall be — here ; 
And I 've no vision of your distant heels. 
[36] 



ON THE WAY 

Burr 

I see that I shall take an inference 
To bed with me to-night to keep me warm. 
I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve 
Your fealty to the aggregated greatness 
Of him you lean on while he leans on you. 

Hamilton 

This easy phrasing is a game of yours 
That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, 
But you that have the sight will not employ 
The will to see with it. If you did so. 
There might be fewer ditches dug for others 
In your perspective ; and there might be fewer 
Contemporary motes of prejudice 
Between you and the man who made the dust. 
Call him a genius or a gentleman, 
A prophet or a builder, or what not, 
But hold your disposition off the balance. 
And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe 
I tell you nothing new to your surmise, 
Or to the tongues of towns and villages) 
I nourished with an adolescent fancy — 
Surely forgivable to you, my friend — 
An innocent and amiable conviction 
That I was, by the grace of honest fortune, 
A savior at his elbow through the war. 
Where I might have observed, more than I did, 
[37] 



ON THE WAY 

Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, 

And for such honor I gave nothing worse 

Than some advice at which he may have smiled. 

I must have given a modicum besides, 

Or the rough interval between those days 

And these would never have made for me my 

friends, 
Or enemies. I should be something somewhere — 
I say not what — but I should not be here 
If he had not been there. Possibly, too, 
You might not — or that Quaker with his cane. 

Burr 

Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty 
Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it. 

Hamilton 

It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind ; 
No god, or ghost, or demon — only a man : 
A man whose occupation is the need 
Of those who would not feel it if it bit them ; 
And one who shapes an age while he endures 
The pin pricks of inferiorities ; 
A cautious man, because he is but one ; 
A lonely man, because he is a thousand. 
No marvel you are slow to find in him 
The genius that is one spark or is nothing : 
His genius is a flame that he must hold 
So far above the common heads of men 
[38] 



ON THE WAY 

That they may view him only through the mist 
Of their defect, and wonder what he is. 
It seems to me the mystery that is in him 
That makes him only more to me a man 
Than any other I have ever known. 

Burr 

I grant you that his worship is a man. 

I'm not so much at home with mysteries, 

May be, as you — so leave him with his fire : 

God knows that I shall never put it out. 

He has not made a cripple of himself 

In his pursuit of me, though I have heard 

His condescension honors me with parts. 

Parts make a whole, if we've enough of them; 

And once I figured a sufficiency 

To be at least an atom in the annals 

Of your republic. But I must have erred. 

Hamilton 

You smile as if your spirit lived at ease 
With error. I should not have named it so, 
Failing assent from you; nor, if I did, 
Should I be so complacent in my skill 
To comb the tangled language of the people 
As to be sure of anything in these days. 
Put that much in account with modesty. 



[39] 



ON THE WAY 

Burr 

What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton, 
Have you, in the last region of your dreaming', 
To do with ''people"? You may be the devil 
In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals 
Are waiting on the progress of our ship 
Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome 
Alone there in the stern; and some warm day 
There '11 be an inland music in the rigging, 
And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined 
Or favored overmuch at Monticello, 
But there's a mighty swarming of new bees 
About the premises, and all have wings. 
If you hear something buzzing before long. 
Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also 
There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard. 
And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly. 

Hamilton 

I don't remember that he cut his hair off. 

Burr 

Somehow I rather fancy that he did. 
If so, it 's in the Book ; and if not so, 
He did the rest, and did it handsomely. 

Hamilton 

Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways 
If they inveigle you to emulation j 

[40] 



ON THE WAY 

But where, if I may ask it, are you tending 
With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures? 
You call to mind an eminent archangel 
Wlio fell to make him famous. Would you fall 
So far as he, to be so far remembered ? 

Burr 

Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, 

I shall acquaint myself a little further 

With our new land's new language, which is not — 

Peace to your dreams — an idiom to your liking. 

I'm wondering if a man may always know 

How old a man may be at thirty-seven; 

I wonder likewise if a prettier time 

Could be decreed for a good man to vanish 

Than about now for you, before you fade, 

And even your friends are seeing that you have had 

Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph. 

Well, you have had enough, and had it young ; 

And the old wine is nearer to the lees 

Than you are to the work that you are doing. 

Hamilton 

WTien does this philological excursion 
Into new lands and languages begin? 

Burr 

Anon — that is, already. Only Fortune 
Gave me this afternoon the benefaction 

[41] 



ON THE WAY 

Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, 

And in pursuing may have saved your life — 

Also the world a pounding piece of news : 

Hamilton bites the dust of Washington, 

Or rather of his horse. For you alone. 

Or for your fame, I'd wish it might have been so. 

Hamilton 

Not every man among us has a friend 

So jealous for the other's fame. How long 

Are you to diagnose the doubtful case 

Of Demos — and what for? Have you a sword 

For some new Damocles? If it's for me, 

I have lost all official appetite, 

And shall have faded, after January, 

Into the law. I'm going to New York. 

Burr 

No matter where you are, one of these days 
I shall come back to you and tell you something. 
This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist 
A pulse that no two doctors have as yet 
Counted and found the same, and in his mouth 
A tongue that has the like alacrity 
For saying or not for saying what most it is 
That pullulates in his ignoble mind. 
One of these days I shall appear again. 
To tell you more of him and his opinions ; 
I shall not be so long out of your sight, 
[42] 



ON THE WAY 

Or take myself so far, that I may not, 

Like Alcibiades, come back again. 

He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill. 

Hamilton 

There's an example in Themistocles : 
He went away to Persia, and fared well. 

Burr 

So ? Must I go so far ? And if so, why so ? 
I had not planned it so. Is this the road 
I take? If so, farewell. 

Hamilton 
Quite so. Farewell. 



[43J 



JOHN BROWN 

Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written ; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife, 
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I — though I have been the most alone, 
Even when the most attended. So it was 
God set the mark of his inscrutable 
Necessity on one that was to grope, 
And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad 
For what was his, and is, and is to be, 
AVhen his old bones, that are a burden now, 
Are saying what the man who carried them 
Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave, 
Cover them as they will with choking earth. 
May shout the truth to men who put them there, 
More than all orators. And so, my dear, 
Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake 
Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you. 
This last of nights before the last of days, 
The lying ghost of what there is of me 
That is the most alive. There is no death 

[44] 



JOHN BROWN 

For me in what they do. Their death it is 
They should heed most when the sun comes again 
To make them solemn. There are some I know 
Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation, 
For tears in them — and all for one old man ; 
For some of them will ipity this old man, 
Who took upon himself the work of God 
Because he pitied millions. That will be 
For them, I fancy, their compassionate 
Best way of saying what is best in them 
To say ; for they can say no more than that, 
And they can do no more than what the dawn 
Of one more day shall give them light enough 
To do. But there are many days to be. 
And there are many men to give their blood, 
As I gave mine for them. May they come soon ! 

May they come soon, I say. And when they come, 

May all that I have said unheard be heard, 

Proving at last, or maybe not — no matter — 

Wliat sort of madness was the part of me 

That made me strike, Avhether I found the mark 

Or missed it. Meanwhile, I've a strange content, 

A patience, and a vast indifference 

To what men say of me and what men fear 

To say. There was a work to be begun. 

And when the Voice, that I have heard so long, 

Announced as in a thousand silences 

An end of preparation, I began 

[45] 



JOHN BROWN 

The coining work of death which is to be, 

That life may be. There is no other way 

Than the old way of war for a new land 

That will not know itself and is tonight 

A stranger to itself, and to the world 

A more prodigious upstart among states 

Than I was among men, and so shall be 

Till they are told and told, and told again; 

For men are children, waiting to be told, 

And most of them are children all their lives. 

The good God in his wisdom had them so, 

That now and then a madman or a seer 

May shake them out of their complacency 

And shame them into deeds. The major file 

See only what their fathers may have seen, 

Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing. 

I do not say it matters what they saw. 

Now and again to some lone soul or other 

God speaks, and there is hanging to be done, — 

As once there was a burning of our bodies 

Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel. 

But now the fires are few, and we are poised 

Accordingly, for the state's benefit, 

A few still minutes between heaven and earth. 

The purpose is, when they have seen enough 

Of what it is that they are not to see. 

To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason. 

And then to fling me back to the same earth 

Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower — 

[4G] 



JOHN BROWN 

Not given to know the riper fruit that waits 
For a more comprehensive harvesting. 

Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say, 
May they come soon ! — before too many of them 
Shall be the bloody cost of our defection. 
When hell waits on the dawn of a new state, 
Better it were that hell should not wait long, — 
Or so it is I see it who should see 
As far or farther into time tonight 
Than they who talk and tremble for me now, 
Or wish me to those everlasting fires 
That are for me no fear. Too many fires 
Have sought me out and seared me to the bone — 
Thereby, for all I know, to temper me 
For what was mine to do. If I did ill 
What I did well, let men say I was mad ; 
Or let my name for ever be a question 
That will not sleep in history. What men say 
I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword. 
Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was ; 
And the long train is lighted that shall burn, 
Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet 
May stamp it for a slight time into smoke 
That shall blaze up again with growing speed, 
Until at last a fiery crash will come 
To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere, 
And heal it of a long malignity 
That angry time discredits and disowns. 
[47] 



JOHN BROWN 

Tonight there are men saying many things ; 

And some who see life in the last of me 

Will answer first the coming call to death; 

For death is what is coming, and then life. 

I do not say again for the dull sake 

Of speech what you have heard me say before, 

But rather for the sake of all I am, 

And all God made of me. A man to die 

As I do must have done some other work 

Than man's alone. I was not after glory, 

But there was glory with me, like a friend, 

Throughout those crippling years when friends 

were few, 
And fearful to be known by their own names 
When mine was vilified for their approval. 
Yet friends they are, and they did what was given 
Their will to do ; they could have done no more. 
I was the one man mad enough, it seems, 
To do my work ; and now my work is over. 
And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me. 
Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn 
In Paradise, done with evil and with earth. 
There is not much of earth in what remains 
For you ; and what there may be left of it 
For your endurance you shall have at last 
In peace, without the twinge of any fear 
For my condition; for I shall be done 
With plans and actions that have heretofore 
Made your days long and your nights ominous 
[48] 



JOHN BROWN 

With darkness and the many distances 

That were between us. When the silence comes, 

I shall in faith be nearer to you then 

Than I am now in fact. What you see now 

Is only the outside of an old man, 

Older than years have made him. Let him die, 

And let him be a thing for little grief. 

There was a time for service, and he serv^ed ; 

And there is no more time for anything 

But a short gratefulness to those who gave 

Their scared allegiance to an enterprise 

That has the name of treason — which will serve 

As well as any other for the present. 

There are some deeds of men that have no names. 

And mine may like as not be one of them. 

I am not looking far for names tonight. 

The King of Glory was without a name 

Until men gave him one ; yet there He was. 

Before we found Him and affronted Him 

With numerous ingenuities of evil, 

Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept 

And washed out of the world with fire and blood. 

Once I believed it might have come to pass 
With a small cost of blood ; but I was dreaming — 
Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard 
When I left you behind me in the north, — 
To wait there and to wonder and grow old 
Of loneliness, — ^told only what was best, 
[49] 



JOHN BROWN ^ 

And with a saving vagueness, I should know 
Till I knew more. And had I known even then- 
After grim years of search and suffering, 
So many of them to end as they began — 
After my sickening doubts and estimations 
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain — 
After a weary delving everywhere 
For men with every virtue but the Vision — 
Could I have known, I say, before I left you 
That summer morning, all there was to know — 
Even unto the last consuming word 
That would have blasted every mortal answer 
As lightning would annihilate a leaf, 
I might have trembled on that summer morning ; 
I might have wavered ; and I might have failed. 

And there are many among men today 
To say of me that I had best have wavered. 
So has it been, so shall it always be, 
For those of us who give ourselves to die 
Before we are so parcelled and approved 
As to be slaughtered by authority. 
We do not make so much of what they say 
As they of what our folly says of us ; 
They give us hardly time enough for that, 
And thereby we gain much by losing little. 
Few are alive to-day with less to lose 
Than I who tell you this, or more to gain ; 
And whether I speak as one to be destroyed 

[50] 



JOHN BROWN 

For no good end outside his own destruction, 
Time shall have more to say than men shall hear 
Between now and the coming of that harvest 
"Which is to come. Before it comes, I go — 
By the short road that mystery makes long 
For man's endurance of accomplishment. 
I shall have more to say when I am dead. 



:/ 



[611 



THE FALSE GODS 

*'We are false and evanescent, and aware of our 

deceit, 
From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that 

is our feet. 
You may serve us if you must, and you shall have 

your wage of ashes, — 
Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you 

to meet. 

* ' You may swear that we are solid, you may say that 

we are strong, 
But we know that we are neither and we say that 

you are wrong; 
You may find an easy worship in acclaiming our 

indulgence, 
But your large admiration of us now is not for long. 

*^If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's 

never still. 
And you pray to see our faces — pray in earnest, and 

you will. 
You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of 

our confusion: 

[52] 



THE FALSE GODS 

For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for 
you to kill. 

''And you may as well observe, while appre- 
hensively at ease 

With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you 
please. 

That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling un- 
regarded, 

Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees. 

"Howsoever like no other be the mode you may 
employ, 

There 's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy ; 

Though the temples you are shaping and the pas- 
sions you are singing 

Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from 
Troy. 

"When we promise more than ever of what never 

shall arrive. 
And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive, 
Make a note that you are sure you understand our 

obligations — 
For there's grief always auditing where two and 

two are five. 

' ' There was this for us to say and there was this for 
you to know, 

[53] 



THE FALSE GODS 

Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to 

tell you so. 
If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured 

composition, 
May the True Gods attend you and forget us when 

we go." 



[54] 



ARCHIBALD'S EXAMPLE 

Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, 
Where trespassers, whatever their degree, 
Were soon frowned out again, was looking off 
Across the clover when he said to me: 

''My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down 
Without a scratch, was once inhabited 
By trees that injured him — an evil trash 
That made a cage, and held him while he bled. 

''Gone fifty years, I see them as they were 
Before they fell. They were a crooked lot 
To spoil my sunset, and I saw no time 
In fifty years for crooked things to rot. 

' ' Trees, yes ; but not a service or a joy 
To God or man, for they were thieves of light. 
So down they came. Nature and I looked on, 
And we were glad when they were out of sight. 

' ' Trees are like men, sometimes ; and that being so. 
So much for that.^' He twinkled in his chair, 
And looked across the clover to the place 
That he remembered when the trees were there. 
[55] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

* ^ Do I hear them ? Yes, I hear the children singing 

— and what of it ? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and 

ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their 

mother, 
We might believe they made a noise. . . . What are 

you — driving at ! ' ^ 

''Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad 

they are so near us, — 
For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were 

nearer still. 
All within an hour it is that I have heard them 

calling. 
And though I pray for them to cease, I know they 

never will ; 
For their music on my heart, though you may freeze 

it, will fall always, 
Like summer snow that never melts upon a moun- 
tain-top. 
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead — 

the children — singing ? 
Do you hear the children singing? . . . God, will 

you make them stop ! ' ' 

[56] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

*'And what now in his holy name have you to do 

with mountains? 
We're back to town again, my dear, and we've a 

dance tonight. 
Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, 

and — what the devil ! 
Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it 

right." 

''God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what 

I tell you. 
Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. 
All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it 

hidden — 
Well, I met him. . . . Yes, I met him, and I talked 

with him — today." 

''You met him? Did you meet the ghost of some- 
one you had poisoned, 

Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that 
you are ? 

Take a chair; and don't begin your stories always 
in the middle. 

Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you've 
gone too far 

To go back, and I'm your servant. I'm the lord, 
but you 're the master. 

Now go on with what you know, for I 'm excited. 

[57] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

"Do you mean — 
Do you mean to make me try to think that you know 
less than I do?" 

"I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a 

scene. 
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of 

heaven 
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for 



''Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt 

of every feeling, 
Of hiding what you know and what you must have 

known before? 
Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and 

have you smiling, 
With only your poor fetish of possession on your 

side? 
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one 

to scare me ; 
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I 

have tried. 
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my 

trials 
Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are 

your own; 
And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I 

have not entered. 

[58] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and 

there alone? 
Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy — 

when it leads 3^ou 
Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the 

abyss?'' 

*^"Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort 

of nonsense 
You are crowding on the patience of the man who 

gives you — this? 
Look around you and be sorry you're not living in 

an attic, 
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay 

the rent. 
I say words that you can spell without the use of 

all your letters ; 
And I grant, if you insist, that I've a guess at 

what you meant." 

''Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met 

him? Are you trying 
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?" 

"Think again, 
My dear, before you tell me, in a language un- 
becoming 
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I 
complain, 

[69] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you 

mention — 
Or iniply, to be precise — you mny believe, or you 

may not, 
That I'm a trifle more aware of wliat he wants 

than you are. 
But I shouldn't throw that at you. Make believe 

llial T forixni. 
Make believe that he's a genius, if you like, — but in 

the meantime 
Don't go back to rocking-horses. There, there, 

there, now." 



''Make believe! 
When you see me standing helpless on a plank 

above a whirlpool, 
Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say 

it? Make believe? 
How much more am I to say or do for you before 

I tell you 
That I met him! What's to follow now nuiy be 

for you to choose. 
Do you hcnr mo? Won't you listen? It's an easy 

thijig to listen. ..." 



And it's easy to be crazy when there's everything 
to lose." 

I 00 I 



LONDON BRIDGE 

"If at last you have a notion that I mean what I 

am saying, 
Do I seem to tell you nothing when 1 tell you I 

shall try ? 
If you save me, and I lose him — I don't know — it 

won't much matter. 
I dare say that I've lied enough, but now I do 

not lie." 



*'Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and 

said nothing 
While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from 

a tomb ? 
Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into 

ashes. 
There you are — piff ! presto ! ' ' 

''When I came into this room. 
It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at 

your table, 
As you are now at this moment, for the last time 

in my life; 
And I told myself before I came to find you, 'I 

shall tell him, 
If I can, what I have learned of him since I became 

his wife.' 
And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before 

I finish, 

[61J 



LONDON BRIDGE 

That you have tried unceasingly, with all your 

might and main, 
To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was 

I needed, 
Don't think, with all you may have thought, that 

you have tried in vain ; 
For you have tauj^ht me more than hides in all 

the shelves of knowledge 
Of how little you found that's in me and was in 

me all along. 
I believed, if T intrudod nothing on you that I 

eared for, 
I'd be half as much as horses, — and it seems that I 

was wrong ; 
I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all 

my nonsense 
Over things that made you sleepy, to keep some- 
thing still awake; 
But you taught me soon to read my book, and God 

knows I have read it — 
Ages longer than an angel would have read it for 

your sake. 
I have said that you must open other doors than I 

have entered, 
But I wondered while I said it if I might not be 

obscure. 
Is there anything in all your pedigrees and in- 
ventories 



[62] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

With a value more elusive liiaii a dollar's? Are 

you sure 
That if I starve another year for you I shall be 

stronp^cr 
To endure another like it — and another — till I'm 

dead?" 

*'Has your tame cat sold a picture? — or more likely 

had a windfall ? 
Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you 

a bee-hive in your head? 
A little more of this from you will not be easy 

hearing. 
Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for 

if you won 't. . . . 
What the dr-vil are you saying! Make believe you 

never s.'iid it, 
And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . 

If you. . . ." 

''If I don't?" 

''There arc men who say there's reason hidden 

somewhere in a woman, 
But I doubt if God himself remembers where the 

key was hung." 

"He may not; for they say that even God himself 
is growing. 

(031 



LONDON BRIDGE 

I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing 

young ; 
I wonder if he makes believe that women who are 

giving 
All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all 

their lives 
Are the wise ones who build houses in the 

Bible. ..." 

^'Stop— you devil!" 



*'. . . Or that souls are any whiter when their 

bodies are called wives. 
If a dollar's worth of gold will hoop the walls of 

hell together, 
Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that 

never was? 
And if at last I lied my starving soul away to 

nothing, 
Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you 

come to such a pass 
That you would have me longer in your arms if 

you discovered 
That I made you into someone else. . . . Oh ! . . . 

Well, there are worse ways. 
But why aim it at my feet — unless you fear you 

may be sorry. . . . 
There are many days ahead of you." 

[64] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

*'I do not see those days/' 

''I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there 

are the children. 
And are they to praise their father for his insight 

if we die? 
Do you hear them ? Do you hear them overhead — 

the children — singing ? 
Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?" 

**Damn the children !'' 

^'Why? 
What have they done? . . . Well, then, — do it. 
... Do it now, and have it over. 

*'0h, you devil! ... Oh, you. . . ." 

*'No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet — 
One who sees the end already of so much that one 

end more 
Would have now the small importance of one other 

small illusion. 
Which in turn would have a welcome where the 

rest have gone before. 
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little 

farther 
For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere 

still in sight. 

[65] 



LONDON BRIDGE 

Furthennore, you must remember those two hun- 
dred invitations 
For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to 

shine tonight. 
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of 

merry spectres, 
On the grave of all the lies that we shall never 

have to tell ; 
We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of 

our endurance, 
And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. 
There! — I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't 

like it. Shut the drawer now. 
No — no — don't cancel anything. I'll dance until 

I drop. 
I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away 

somewhere, and leave me. . . . 
Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, 

will they never stop ! ' ' 



[66] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

'* Whether all towns and all who live in them — 
So long as they be somewhere in this world 
That we in our complacency call ours — 
Are more or less the same, I leave to you. 
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile, 
We've all two legs — and as for that, we haven't— 
There were three kinds of men where I was born 
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. 
Now there are two kinds." 

''Meaning, as I divine, 
Your friend is dead," I ventured. 

Ferguson, 
Who talked himself at last out of the world 
He censured, and is therefore silent now. 
Agreed indifferently : ' ' My friends are dead — 
Or most of them. ' ' 

''Remember one that isn't," 
I said, protesting. ' ' Honor him for his ears ; 
Treasure him also for his understanding." 
Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again : 
*'You have an overgrown alacrity 

[67] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

For saying nothing much and hearing less; 
And I've a thankless wonder, at the start, 
How much it is to you that I shall tell 
"What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross, 
And how much to the air that is around you. 
But given a patience that is not averse 
To the slow tragedies of haunted men — 
Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye 
To know them at their firesides, or out walking, — " 

^* Horrors," I said, ''are my necessity; 

And I would have them, for their best effect, 

Always out walking." 

Ferguson frowned at me: 
*^The wisest of us are not those who laugh 
Before they know. Most of us never know — 
Or the long toil of our mortality 
Would not be done. Most of us never know — 
And there you have a reason to believe 
In God, if you may have no other. Norcross, 
Or so I gather of his infirmity, 
Was given to know more than he should have 

known, 
And only God knows why. See for yourself 
An old house full of ghosts of ancestors. 
Who did their best, or worst, and having done it, 
Died honorably; and each with a distinction 
That hardly would have been for him that had it, 

[68] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

Had honor failed him wholly as a friend. 

Honor that is a friend begets a friend. 

Whether or not we love him, still we have him; 

And we must live somehow by what we have, 

Or then we die. If you say chemistry. 

Then you must have your molecules in motion, 

And in their right abundance. Failing either, 

You have not long to dance. Failing a friend, 

A genius, or a madness, or a faith 

Larger than desperation, you are here 

For as much longer than you like as may be. 

Imagining now, by way of an example, 

Myself a more or less remembered phantom — 

Again, I should say less — how many times 

A day should I come back to you ? No answer. 

Forgive me when I seem a little careless. 

But we must have examples, or be lucid 

Without them ; and I question your adherence 

To such an undramatic narrative 

As this of mine, without the personal hook.'' 

**A time is given in Ecclesiastes 
For divers works,'' I told him. '*Is there one 
For saying nothing in return for nothing ? 
If not, there should be. " I could feel his eyes. 
And they were like two cold inquiring points 
Of a sharp metal. When I looked again, 
To see them shine, the cold that I had felt 
Was gone to make way for a smouldering 

[69] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

Of lonely fire tliat I, as I knew then, 

Could never quench with kindness or with lies. 

I should have done whatever there was to do 

For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned 

In honesty for once around the clock 

The loss of him, for my sake or for his, 

Try as I might ; nor would his ghost approve, 

Had I the power and the unthinking will 

To make him tread again without an aim 

The road that was behind him — and without 

The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness 

That he contended was imperative. 

After a silence that had been too long, 
*'It may be quite as well we don't," he said; 
**As well, I mean, that we don't always say it. 
You know best what I mean, and I suppose 
You might have said it better. What was that? 
Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible? 
"Well, it's a word; and a word has its use, 
Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave. 
It's a good word enough. Incorrigible, 
May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross. 
See for yourself that house of his again 
That he called home : An old house, painted white. 
Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb 
To look at or to live in. There were trees — 
Too many of them, if such a thing may be — 
Before it and around it. Down in front 
[70] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

There was a road, a railroad, and a river; 
Then there were hills behind it, and more trees. 
The thing would fairly stare at you thro^igh trees, 
Like a pale inmate out of a barred window 
With a green shade half do^vn ; and I dare say 
People who passed have said: 'There's where he 

lives. 
We know him, but we do not seem to know 
That we remember any good of him, 
Or any evil that is interesting. 
There you have all we know and all we care.' 
They might have said it in all sorts of ways; 
And then, if they perceived a cat, they might 
Or might not have remembered what they said. 
The cat might have a personality — 
And maybe the same one the Lord left out 
Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, 
Saw the same sun go down year after year; 
All which at last was my discovery. 
And only mine, so far as evidence 
Enlightens one more darkness. You have known 
All round you, all your days, men who are noth- 
ing- 
Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet 
Of any other need it has of them 
Than to make sextons hardy — but no less 
Are to themselves incalculably something. 
And therefore to be cherished. God, you see, 
Being sorry for them in their fashioning, 
[71] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

Indemnified them with, a quaint esteem 
Of self, and with illusions long as life. 
You know them well, and you have smiled at them ; 
And they, in their serenity, may have had 
Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they 
That see themselves for what they never were 
Or were to be, and are, for their defect. 
At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks 
That pass their tranquil ears.'^ 

*'Come, come," said I; 
*' There may be names in your compendium 
That we are not yet all on fire for shouting. 
Skin most of us of our mediocrity. 
We should have nothing then that we could scratch. 
The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please. 
And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross." 

Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation, 
While a dead sigh came out of him. ' ' Good God ! ' * 
He said, and said it only half aloud. 
As if he knew no longer now, nor cared. 
If one were there to listen : ' ' Have I said nothing — 
Nothing at all — of Norcross ? Do you mean 
To patronize him till his name becomes 
A toy made out of letters? If a name 
Is all you need, arrange an honest column 
Of all the people you have ever known 
That you have never liked. You'll have enough; 
[72] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

And you'll have mine, moreover. No, not yet. 

If I assume too many privileges, 

I pay, and I alone, for their assumption; 

By which, if I assume a darker knowledge 

Of Norcross than another, let the weight 

Of my injustice aggravate the load 

That is not on your shoulders. When I came 

To know this fellow Norcross in his house, 

I found him as I found him in the street — 

No more, no less; indifferent, but no better. 

^ Worse' were not quite the word: he was not bad; 

He was not . . . well, he was not anything. 

Has your invention ever entertained 

The picture of a dusty worm so dry 

That even the early bird would shake his head 

And fly on farther for another breakfast?" 

''But why forget the fortune of the worm," 
I said, ''if in the dryness you deplore 
Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross 
May have been one for many to have envied." 

"Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say 

that? 
He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm 
With all dry things but one. Figures away, 
Do you begin to see this man a little? 
Do you begin to see him in the air. 
With all the vacant horrors of his outline 

[73] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

For you to fill with more than it will hold ? 
If so, you needn't crown yourself at once 
With epic laurel if you seem to fill it. 
Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks 
Of a new hell — if one were not enough — 
I doubt if a new horror would have held him 
With a malignant ingenuity 
More to be feared than his before he died. 
You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again. 
Now come into his house, along with me : 
The four square sombre things that you see first 
Around you are four walls that go as high 
As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well, 
And he knew others like them. Fasten to that 
With all the claws of your intelligence; 
And hold the, man before you in his house 
As if he were a white rat in a box. 
And one that knew himself to be no other. 
I tell you twice that he knew all about it. 
That you may not forget the worst of all 
Our tragedies begin with what we know. 
Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder 
How many would have blessed and envied him ! 
Could he have had the usual eye for spots 
On others, and for none upon himself, 
I smile to ponder on the carriages 
That might as well as not have clogged the town 
In honor of his end. For there was gold. 
You see, though all he needed was a little, 
[74] 



TASKER >^ORCROSS 

And what he gave said nothing of who gave it. 
He would have given it all if in return 
There might have been a more sufficient face 
To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist 
It is the dower, and always, of our degree 
Not to be cursed with such invidious insight, 
Remember that you stand, you and your fancy, 
Now in his house ; and since we are together, 
See for yourself and tell me what you see. 
Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise 
Of recognition when you find a book 
That you would not as lief read upside down 
As otherwise, for example. If there you fail. 
Observe the walls and lead me to the place, 
A^Tiere you are led. If there you meet a picture 
That holds you near it for a longer time 
Than you are sorry, you may call it yours. 
And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, 
Where Norcross never sees. How can he see 
That has no eyes to see? And as for music. 
He paid with empty wonder for the pangs 
Of his infrequent forced endurance of it ; 
And having had no pleasure, paid no more 
For needless immolation, or for the sight 
Of those who heard what he was never to hear. 
To see them listening was itself enough 
To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes, 
On other days, of strangers who forgot 
Their sorrows and their failures and themselves 
[75] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

Before a few mysterious odds and ends 
Of marble carted from the Parthenon — 
And all for seeing what he was never to see, 
Because it was alive and he was dead — 
Here was a wonder that was more profound 
Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns. 

' ' He knew, and in his knowledge there was death. 
He knew there was a region all around him 
That lay outside man's havoc and affairs, 
And yet was not all hostile to their tumult, 
Where poets would have served and honored him, 
And saved him, had there been anything to save. 
But there was nothing, and his tethered range 
Was only a small desert. Kings of song 
Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound 
And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven 
Where there is none to know them from the rocks 
And sand-grass of his own monotony 
That makes earth less than earth. He could see 

that, 
And he could see no more. The captured light 
That may have been or not, for all he cared, 
The song that is in sculpture was not his, 
But only, to his God-forgotten eyes. 
One more immortal nonsense in a world 
Where all was mortal, or had best be so, 
And so be done with. ' Art, ' he would have said, 
'Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;' 
[76] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

And with a few profundities like that 

He would have controverted and dismissed 

The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them, 

As he had heard of his aspiring soul — 

Never to the perceptible advantage, 

In his esteem, of either. 'Faith,' he said, 

Or would have said if he had thought of it, 

'Lives in the same house with Philosophy, 

Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn 

As orphans after war. He could see stars, 

On a clear night, but he had not an eye 

To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words. 

But had no ear for silence when alone. 

He could eat food of which he knew the savor, 

But had no palate for the Bread of Life, 

That human desperation, to his thinking. 

Made famous long ago, having no other. 

Now do you see? Do you begin to see?" 

I told him that I did begin to see; 
And I was nearer than I should have been 
To laughing at his malign inclusiveness, 
When I considered that, with all our speed, 
We are not laughing yet at funerals. 
I see him now as I could see him then, 
And I see now that it was good for me, 
As it was good for him, that I was quiet; 
For Time's eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft 
Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him, 
[77] 



TASKER NORCROSS 

Or so I chose to fancy more than once 

Before he told of Norcross. When the word 

Of his release (he would have called it so) 

Made half an inch of news, there were no tears 

That are recorded. Women there may have been 

To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing, 

The few there were to mourn were not for love, 

And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least, 

Was in the meagre legend that I gathered 

Years after, when a chance of travel took me 

So near the region of his nativity 

That a few miles of leisure brought me there; 

For there I found a friendly citizen 

Who led me to his house among the trees 

That were above a railroad and a river. 

Square as a box and chillier than a tomb 

It was indeed, to look at or to live in — 

All which had I been told. ' ' Ferguson died. 

The stranger said, ' ' and then there was an auction. 

I live here, but I've never yet been warm. 

Remember him? Yes, I remember him. 

I knew him — as a man may know a tree — 

For twenty years. He may have held himself 

A little high when he was here, but now . . . 

Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes." 

Others, I found, remembered Ferguson, 

But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross. 



[78] 



A SONG AT SHANNON'S 

Two men came out of Shannon's having known 

The faces of each other for as long 

As they had listened there to an old song, 

Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone 

By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown 

Too many times and with a wing too strong 

To save himself, and so done heavy wrong 

To more frail elements than his alone. 

Slowly away they went, leaving behind 

More light than was before them. Neither met 

The other's eyes again or said a word. 

Each to his loneliness or to his kind, 

Went his own way, and with his own regret. 

Not knowing what the other may have heard. 



[79] 



SOUVENIR 

A VANISHED house that for an hour I knew 
By some forgotten chance when I was young 
Had once a glimmering window overhung 
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew. 
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew, 
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung 
Ferociously; and over me, among 
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew. 

Somewhere within there were dim presences 
Of days that hovered and of years gone by. 
I waited, and between their silences 
There was an evanescent faded noise; 
And though a child, I knew it was the voice 
Of one whose occupation was to die. 



[80] 



DISCOVERY 

We told of him as one who should have soared 
And seen for ns the devastating light 
Whereof there is not either day or night, 
And shared with us the glamour of the Word 
That fell once upon Amos to record 
For men at ease in Zion, when the sight 
Of ills obscured aggrieved him and the might 
Of Hamath was a warning of the Lord. 

Assured somehow that he would make us wise, 
Our pleasure was to wait ; and our surprise 
Was hard when we confessed the dry return 
Of his regret. For we were still to learn 
That earth has not a school where we may go 
For wisdom, or for more than we may know. 



[81] 



FIRELIGHT 

Ten years together without yet a cloud, 
They seek each other's eyes at intervals 
Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls 
For love's obliteration of the crowd. 
Serenely and perennially endowed 
And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls 
No snake, no sword ; and over them there falls 
The blessing of what neither says aloud. 

Wiser for silence, they were not so glad 
Were she to read the graven tale of lines 
On the wan face of one somewhere alone; 
Nor were they more content could he have had 
Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines 
Apart, and would be hers if he had known. 



[82] 



THE NEW TENANTS 

The day was here when it was his to know 
How fared the barriers he had built between 
His triumph and his enemies unseen, 
For them to undermine and overthrow ; 
And it was his no longer to forego 
The sight of them, insidious and serene, 
Where they were delving always and had been 
Left always to be vicious and to grow. 

And there were the new tenants who had come, 
By doors that were left open unawares, 
Into his house, and were so much at home 
There now that he would hardly have to guess, 
By the slow guile of their vindictiveness. 
What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs. 



[83] 



INFERENTIAL 

Although I saw before me there the face 
Of one whom I had honored among men 
The least, and on regarding him again 
Would not have had him in another place, 
He fitted with an unfamiliar grace 
The coffin where I could not see him then 
As I had seen him and appraised him when 
I deemed him unessential to the race. 

For there was more of him than what I saw. 

And there was on me more than the old awe 

That is the common genius of the dead. 

I might as well have heard him : ' ' Never mind ; 

If some of us were not so far behind, 

The rest of us were not so far ahead. ' ' 



[84] 



THE RAT 

As often as he let himself be seen 
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored 
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord 
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean — 
Who made him human when he might have been 
A rat, and so been wholly in accord 
With any other creature we abhorred 
As always useless and not always clean. 

Now he is hiding all alone somewhere, 
And in a final hole not ready then; 
For now he is among those over there 
Who are not coming back to us again. 
And we who do the fiction of our share 
Say less of rats and rather more of men. 



[85T 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

Note, — Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were mar- 
ried, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The 
marriage — so far as he was concerned, at any rate — ap- 
pears to have been satisfactory. 

Now you have read them all ; or if not all, 
As many as in all conscience I should fancy 
To be enough. There are no more of them — 
Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams 
Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely 
You are a strange young man. I might live on 
Alone, and for another forty years. 
Or not quite forty, — are you happier now? — 
Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere 
Another like yourself that would have held 
These aged hands as long as you have held them, 
Not once observing, for all I can see, 
How they are like your mother's. Well, you have 

read 
His letters now, and you have heard me say 
That in them are the cinders of a passion 
That was my life; and you have not yet broken 
Your way out of my house, out of my sight, — 
Into the street. You are a strange young man. 

[86] . 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

I know as much as that of you, for certain; 
And I'm already praying, for your sake, 
That you be not too strange. Too much of that 
May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes 
To a sad wilderness, where one may grope 
Alone, and always, or until he feels 
Ferocious and invisible animals 
That wait for men and eat them in the dark. 
Why do you sit there on the floor so long, 
Smiling at me while I try to be solemn? 
Do you not hear it said for your salvation, 
When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty, 
So little deceived in us that you interpret 
The humor of a woman to be noticed 
As her choice between you and Acheron? 
Are you so unscathed yet as to infer 
That if a woman worries when a man, 
Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet 
She may as well commemorate with ashes 
The last eclipse of her tranquillity? 
If you look up at me and blink again, 
I shall not have to make you tell me lies 
To know the letters you have not been reading. 
I see now that I may have had for nothing 
A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience 
"When I laid open for your contemplation 
The wealth of my worn casket. If I did, 
The fault was not yours wholly. Search again 
This wreckage we may call for sport a face, 
[87] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

And you may chance upon the price of havoc 

That I have paid for a few sorry stones 

That shine and have no light — yet once were stars, 

And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak 

They seem ; and they are cold, I fear, for you. 

But they that once were fire for me may not 

Be cold again for me until I die; 

And only God knows if they may be then. 

There is a love that ceases to be love 

In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it? 

You that are sure that you know everything 

There is to know of love, answer me that. 

Well? . . . You are not even interested. 

Once on a far off time when I was young, 
I felt with your assurance, and all through me, 
That I had undergone the last and worst 
Of love 's inventions. There was a boy who brought 
The sun with him and woke me up with it. 
And that was every morning ; every night 
I tried to dream of him, but never could, 
More than I might have seen in Adam's eyes 
Their fond uncertainty when Eve began 
The play that all her tireless progeny 
Are not yet weary of. One scene of it 
Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted; 
And that was while I was the happiest 
Of ail imaginary six or seven. 
Somewhere in history but not on earth, 
[88] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

For whom the sky had shaken and let stars 
Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds, 
And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon 
Despair came, like a blast that would have brought 
Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland, 
And love was done. That was how much I knew. 
Poor little wretch ! I wonder where he is 
This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope. 

At last, when I had seen so many days 
Dressed all alike, and in their marching order, 
Go by me that I would not always count them. 
One stopped — shattering the whole file of Time, 
Or so it seemed ; and when I looked again. 
There was a man. He struck once with his eyes, 
And then there was a woman. I, who had come 
To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like, 
By the old hidden road that has no name, — 
I, who was used to seeing without flying 
So much that others fly from without seeing, 
Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again. 
And after that, when I had read the story 
Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart 
The bleeding wound of their necessity, 
I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him 
And flown away from him, I should have lost 
Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back. 
And found them arms again. If he had struck me 
Not only with his eyes but with his hands, 
[89] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

I might have pitied him and hated love, 

And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong — 

Why don't you laugh? — might even have done 

all that. 
I, who have learned so much, and said so much, 
And had the commendations of the great 
For one who rules herself — why don't you cry? — 
And own a certain small authority 
Among the blind, who see no more than ever, 
But like my voice, — I would have tossed it all 
To Tophet for one man ; and he was jealous. 
I would have wound a snake around my neck 
And then have let it bite me till I died, 
If my so doing would have made me sure 
That one man might have lived ; and he was jealous. 
I would have driven these hands into a cage 
That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them, 
If only by so poisonous a trial 
I could have crushed his doubt. I would have 

wrung 
My living blood with mediaeval engines 
Out of my screaming flesh, if only that 
Would have made one man sure. I would have paid 
For him the tiresome price of body and soul. 
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town 
Fall as it might upon my blistered name ; 
And while it fell I could have laughed at it, 
Knowing that he had found out finally 
Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him 
[90] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

That would have made no more of his possession 

Than coufirmation of another fault ; 

And there was honor — if you call it honor 

That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown 

Of lead that might as well be gold and fire. 

Give it as heavy or as light a name 

As any there is that fits. I see myself 

Without the power to swear to this or that 

That I might be if he had been without it. 

Whatever I might have been that I was not, 

It only happened that it wasn 't so. 

Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening: 

If you forget yourself and go to sleep, 

My treasure, I shall not say this again. 

Look up once more into my poor old face. 

Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what, 

And say to me aloud what else there is 

Than ruins in it that you most admire. 

No, there was never anything like that; 

Nature has never fastened such a mask 

Of radiant and impenetrable merit 

On any woman as j^ou say there is 

On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir, 

But you see more with your determination, 

I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience; 

And you have never met me with my eyes 

In all the mirrors I've made faces at. 

No, I shall never call you strange again : 

[91] 



RAHEL TO YARNHAGEN 

You are the youn^ and inconvincible 
Epitome of all blind men since Adam. 
May the blind lead the blind, if that be so? 
And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying 
What most I feared you might. But if the blind, 
Or one of them, be not so fortunate 
As to put out the eyes of recollection, 
She might at last, without her meaning it, 
Lead on the other, without his knowing it, 
Until the two of them should lose themselves 
Among dead craters in a lava-field 
As empty as a desert on the moon. 
I am not speaking in a theatre. 
But in a room so real and so familiar 
That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause, 
Remembering there is a King in Weimar — 
A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd 
Of all who are astray and are outside 
The realm where they should rule. I think of him, 
And save the furniture ; I think of you, 
And am forlorn, finding in you the one 
To lavish aspirations and illusions 
Upon a faded and forsaken house 
Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning 
House and himself together. Yes, you are strange. 
To see in such an injured architecture 
Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing? 
No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be. 
Tears, even if they told only gratitude 
[92] 



EAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

For your escape, and had no other story, 
Were surely more becoming than a smile 
For my unwomanly straightforwardness 
In seeing for you, through my close gate of years 
Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile? 
And while I'm trembling at my faith in you 
In giving you to read this book of danger 
That only one man living might have written — 
These letters, which have been a part of me 
So long that you may read them all again 
As often as you look into my face. 
And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them 
Whenever you have to touch me with your hand, — 
Why are you so unwilling to be spared ? 
Why do you still believe in me ? But no, 
I'll find another way to ask you that. 
I wonder if there is another way 
That says it better, and means anything. 
There is no other way that could be worse ? 
I was not asking you ; it was myself 
Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip 
For lies, when there is nothing in my weU 
But shining truth, you say ? How do you know ? 
Truth has a lonely life down where she lives; 
And many a time, when she comes up to breathe. 
She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples. 
Possibly you may know no more of me 
Than a few ripples ; and thej^ may soon be gone. 
Leaving you then with all my shining truth 
[93] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

Drowned in a shining water ; and when you look 
You may not see me there, but something else 
That never was a woman — being yourself. 
You say to me my truth is past all drowning, 
And safe with you for ever? You know all that? 
How do you know all that, and who has told you? 
You know so much that I'm an atom frightened 
Because you know so little. And what is this ? 
You know the luxury there is in haunting 
The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion — 
If that's your name for them — with only ghosts 
For company ? You know that when a woman 
Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience 
(Another name of yours for a bad temper) 
She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it 
(That's what you mean, whatever the turn you 

give it), 
Sure of a kindred sympathj^^, and thereby 
Effect a mutual calm? You know that wisdom, 
Given in vain to make a food for those 
"Who are without it, will be seen at last. 
And even at last only by those who gave it. 
As one or more of the forgotten crumbs 
That others leave ? You know that men 's applause 
And women's envy savor so much of dust 
That I go hungry, having at home no fare 
But the same changeless bread that I may swallow 
Only with tears and prayers ? Who told you that ? 
You know that if I read, and read alone, 

[94] 



RAHEL TO VARNHAGEN 

Too many books that no men yet have written, 

I may go blind, or worse ? You know yourself, 

Of all insistent and insidious creatures, 

To be the one to save me, and to guard 

For me their flaming language? And you know 

That if I give much headway to the whim 

That's in me never to be quite sure that even 

Through all those years of storm and fire I waited 

For this one rainy day, I may go on. 

And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes, 

To a cold end? You know so dismal much 

As that about me ? . . . Well, I believe you do. 



[95] 



NIMMO 

Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive 
At such a false and florid and far drawn 
Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive 
No longer, though I may have led you on. 

So much is told and heard and told again, 
So many with his legend are engrossed, 
That I, more sorry now than I was then, 
May live on to be sorry for his ghost. 

You knew him, and you must have known his 

eyes,— 
How deep they were, and what a velvet light 
Came out of them when anger or surprise, 
Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright. 

No, you will not forget such eyes, I think, — 
And you say nothing of them. Very well. 
I wonder if all history's worth a wink, 
Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell. 

For they began to lose their velvet light; 
Their fire grew dead without and small within; 
And many of you deplored the needless fight 
That somewhere in the dark there must have been. 
[96] 



NIMMO 

All fights are needless, when they Ve not our own, 
But Nimmo and Franeesca never fought. 
Rememher that ; and when you are alone, 
Eemember me — and think what I have thought. 

Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was, 
Or never was, or could or could not be : 
Bring not suspicion's candle to the glass 
That mirrors a friend's face to memory. 

Of what you see, see all, — but see no more ; 
For what I show you here will not be there. 
The devil has had his way with paint before, 
And he's an artist, — and you needn't stare. 

There was a painter and he painted well : 
He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den, 
Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell. 
I 'm coming back to Nimmo 's eyes again. 

The painter put the devil in those eyes, 
Unless the devil did, and there he stayed ; 
And then the lady fled from paradise. 
And there's your fact. The lady was afraid. 

She must have been afraid, or may have been, 

Of evil in their velvet all the while; 

But sure as I'm a sinner with a skin, 

I'll trust the man as long as he can smile. 

[97] 



NIMMO 

I trust him who can smile and then may live 
In my heart's house, where Nimmo is today. 
God knows if I have more than men forgive 
To tell him ; but I played, and I shall pay. 

I knew him then, and if I know him yet, 

I know in him, defeated and estranged, 

The calm of men forbidden to forget 

The calm of women who have loved and changed. 

But there are ways that are beyond our ways, 
Or he would not be calm and she be mute. 
As one by one their lost and empty days 
Pass without even the warmth of a dispute. 

God help us all when women think they see ; 
God save us when they do. I'm fair; but though 
I know him only as he looks to me, 
I know him, — and I tell Francesca so. 

And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask 
Of him, could you but see him as I can, 
At his bewildered and unfruitful task 
Of being what he was born to be — a man. 

Better forget that I said anything 
Of what your tortured memory may disclose; 
I know him, and your worst remembering 
Would count as much as nothing, I suppose. 

[98] 



NIMMO 

Meanwhile, I trust him ; and I know his way 
Of trusting me, as always in his j^outh. 
I'm painting here a better man, you say, 
Than I, the painter; and you say the truth. 



[9C] 



PEACE ON EARTH 

He took a frayed hat from his head, 
And ''Peace on Earth'' was what he said. 
' ' A morsel out of what yon 're worth, 
And there we have it: Peace on Earth. 
Not mnch, although a little more 
Than what there was on earth before. 
I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, — 
But never mind the ways I've trod; 
I 'm sober now, so help me God. ' ' 

I could not pass the fellow by. 
''Do you believe in God?" said I; 
*'And is there to be Peace on Earth?" 

"Tonight we celebrate the birth," 
He said, "of One who died for men; 
The Son of God, we say. What then? 
Your God, or mine? I'd make you laugh 
Were I to tell you even half 
That I have learned of mine today 
Where yours would hardly seem to stay. 
Could He but follow in and out 
Some anthropoids I toiow about, 

[100] 



PEACE ON EARTH 

The God to whom you may have prayed 
Might see a world He never made." 

**Your words are flowing full," said I; 
* ' But yet they give me no reply ; 
Your fountain might as well be dry. ' ' 

"A wiser One than you, my friend, 
Would wait and hear me to the end; 
And for His eyes a light would shine 
Through this unpleasant shell of mine 
That in your fancy makes of me 
A Christmas curiosity. 
All right, I might be worse than that; 
And you might now be lying flat ; 
I might have done it from behind, 
And taken what there was to find. 
Don't worry, for I'm not that kind. 
'Do I believe in God?' Is that 
The price tonight of a new hat? 
Has He commanded that His name 
Be written everywhere the same? 
Have all who live in every place 
Identified His hidden face? 
Who knows but He may like as well 
My story as one you may tell? 
And if He show me there be Peace 
On Earth, as there be fields and trees 
Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong 

[101] 



PEACE ON EARTH 

If now I sing Him a new song? 
Your world is in yourself, my friend, 
For your endurance to the end; 
And all the Peace there is on Earth 
Is faith in what your world is worth, 
And saying, without any lies. 
Your world could not be othermse.'* 

**One might say that and then be shot,'^ 
I told him; and he said: "Why not?" 
I ceased, and gave him rather more 
Than he was counting of my store. 
**And since I have it, thanks to you, 
Don't ask me what I mean to do," 
Said he. *' Believe that even I 
Would rather tell the truth than lie — 
On Christmas Eve. No matter why." 

His unshaved, educated face. 

His inextinguishable grace, 

And his hard smile, are with me still. 

Deplore the vision as I will; 

For whatsoever he be at, 

So droll a derelict as that 

Should have at least another hat. 



[102] 



LATE SmiMER 

(ALCAICS) 

Confused, he found her lavishing feminine 
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; 

And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors 
Be as they were, without end, her playthings ? 

And why were dead years hungrily telling her 
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? 

If now she knew, there might be kindness 
Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled. 

A little faith in him, and the ruinous 
Past would be for time to annihilate. 

And wash out, like a tide that washes 
Out of the sand what a child has drawn there. 

God, what a shining handful of happiness, 
Made out of days and out of eternities, 

Were now the pulsing end of patience — 
Could he but have what a ghost had stolen ! 

What was a man before him, or ten of them, 
While he was here alive who could answer them, 

And in their teeth fling confirmations 
Harder than agates against an egg-shell? 
[103] 



LATE SUMMER 

But now the man was dead, and would come again 
Never, though she might honor ineffably 
The flimsy wraith of him she conjured 
Out of a dream with his wand of absence. 

And if the truth were now but a mummery, 
Meriting pride's implacable irony. 

So much the worse for pride. Moreover, 
Save her or fail, there was conscience always. 

Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence, 
Imploring to be sheltered and credited, 

Were not amiss when she revealed them. 
Whether she struggled or not, he saw them. 

Also, he saw that while she was hearing him 
Her eyes had more and more of the past in them ; 

And while he told what cautious honor 
Told him was all he had best be sure of. 

He wondered once or twice, inadvertently, 
Where shifting winds were driving his argosies, 

Long anchored and as long unladen, 
Over the foam for the golden chances. 

''If men were not for killing so carelessly. 
And women were for wiser endurances," 

He said, ' ' we might have yet a world here 
Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in; 

[104] 



LATE SUMMER 

''If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness, 
And we were less forbidden to look at it, 

We might not have to look. ' ' He stared then 
Down at the sand where the tide threw forward 

Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly 
Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm 
enough. 
Although he knew he might be silenced 
Out of all calm ; and the night was coming. 

' ' I climb for you the peak of his infamy 

That you may choose your fall if you cling to it. 

No more for me unless you say more. 
All you have left of a dream defends you : 

' ' The truth may be as evil an augury 
As it was needful now for the two of us. 
We cannot have the dead between us. 
Tell me to go, and I go. ' ' — She pondered : 

* ' What you believe is right for the two of us 
Makes it as right that you are not one of us. 

If this be needful truth you tell me. 
Spare me, and let me have lies hereafter." 



She gazed away where shadows were covering 
The whole cold ocean's healing indifference. 
No ship was coming. When the darkness 
Fell, she was there, and alone, still gazing. 

[105] 



AN EVANGELIST'S WIFE 

''Why am I not myself these many days, 
You ask? And have you nothing more to ask? 
I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise 
To God for giving you me to share your task? 

"Jealous — of Her? Because her cheeks are pink, 
And she has eyes? No, not if she had seven. 
If you should only steal an hour to think, 
Sometime, there might be less to be forgiven. 

"No, you are never cruel. If once or twice 
I found you so, I could applaud and sing. 
Jealous of — What? You are not very wise. 
Does not the good Book tell you anything? 

"In David's time poor Michal had to go. 
Jealous of God? Well, if you like it so.'* 



[106] 



THE OLD KING'S NEW JESTER 

You that in vain would front the coming order 

With eyes that meet forlornly what they must, 

And only with a furtive recognition 

See dust where there is dust, — 

Be sure you like it always in your faces, 

Obscuring your best graces, 

Blinding your speech and sight, 

Before you seek again your dusty places 

Where the old wrong seems right. 

Longer ago than cave-men had their changes 

Our fathers may have slain a son or two, 

Discouraging a further dialectic 

Regarding what was new; 

And after their unstudied admonition 

Occasional contrition 

For their old-fashioned ways 

May have reduced their doubts, and in addition 

Softened their final days. 

Farther away than feet shall ever travel 
Are the vague towers of our unbuilded State; 
But there are mightier things than we to lead us, 
That will not let us wait. 
[107] 



THE OLD KING'S NEW JESTER 

And we go on with none to tell us whether 
Or not weVe each a tether 
Determining how fast or far we go; 
And it is well, since we must go together, 
That we are not to know. 

If the old wrong and all its injured glamour 

Haunts you by day and gives your night no peace, 

You may as well, agreeably and serenely, 

Give the new wrong its lease ; 

For should you nourish a too fervid yearning 

For what is not returning, 

The vicious and unfused ingredient 

May give you qualms — and one or two concerning 

The last of your content. 



[108] 



LAZARUS 

**No, Mary, there was nothing — not a word. 

Nothing, and always nothing. Go again 

Yourself, and he may listen — or at least 

Look up at you, and let you see his eyes. 

I might as well have been the sound of rain, 

A wind among the cedars, or a bird; 

Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you; 

And even if he should say that we are nothing. 

To know that you have heard him will be something. 

And yet he loved us, and it was for love 

The Master gave him back. Why did He wait 

So long before He came? Why did He weep? 

I thought He would be glad — and Lazarus — 

To see us all again as He had left us — 

All as it was, all as it was before.'' 

Mary, who felt her sister's frightened arms 
Like those of someone drowning who had seized her, 
Fearing at last they were to fail and sink 
Together in this fog-stricken sea of strangeness, 
Fought sadly, with bereaved indignant eyes. 
To find > again the fading shores of home 
That she had seen but now could see no longer. 
[109] 



LAZARUS 

Now she could only gaze into the twilight, 
And in the dimness know that he was there, 
Like someone that was not. He who had been 
Their brother, and was dead, now seemed alive 
Only in death again — or worse than death; 
For tombs at least, always until today, 
Though sad were certain. There was nothing 

certain 
For man or God in such a day as this ; 
For there they were alone, and there was he — 
Alone; and somewhere out of Bethany, 
The Master — who had come to them so late, 
Only for love of them and then so slowly, 
And was for their sake hunted now by men 
Who feared Him as they feared no other prey — 
For the world's sake was hidden. '* Better the 

tomb 
For Lazarus than life, if this be life," 
She thought; and then to Martha, ''No, my dear," 
She said aloud; ''not as it v/as before. 
Nothing is ever as it was before, 
Where Time has been. Here there is more than 

Time ; 
And we that are so lonely and so far 
From home, since he is with us here again. 
Are farther now from him and from ourselves 
Than we are from the stars. He will not speak 
Until the spirit that is in him speaks ; 
And we must wait for all we are to know, 

[110] 



LAZARUS 

Or even to learn that we are not to know. 

Martha, we are too near to this for knowledge, 

And that is why it is that we must wait. 

Our friends are coming if we call for them. 

And there are covers we'll put over him 

To make him warmer. We are too young, perhaps, 

To say that we know better what is best 

Than he. We do not know how old he is. 

If you remember what the Master said. 

Try to believe that we need have no fear. 

Let me, the selfish and the careless one. 

Be housewife and a mother for tonight; 

For I am not so fearful as you are, 

And I was not so eager." 

Martha sank 
Down at her sister's feet and there sat watching 
A flower that had a small familiar name 
That was as old as memory, but was not 
The name of what she saw now in its brief 
And infinite mystery that so frightened her 
That life became a terror. Tears again 
Flooded her eyes and overflowed. *'No, Mary," 
She murmured slowly, hating her own words 
Before she heard them, ''you are not so eager 
To see our brother as we see him now; 
Neither is He who gave him back to us. 
I was to be the simple one, as always, 
And this was all for me. ' ' She stared again 
[111] 



LAZARUS 

Over among the trees where Lazarus, 

"Who seemed to be a man who was not there, 

Might have been one more shadow among shadows, 

If she had not remembered. Then she felt 

The cool calm hands of Mary on her face, 

And shivered, wondering if such hands were real. 

''The Master loved you as He loved us all, 

Martha ; and you are saying only things 

That children say when they have had no sleep. 

Try somehow now to rest a little while ; 

You know that I am here, and that our friends 

Are coming if I call. ' ' 

Martha at last 
Arose, and went with Mary to the door, 
Where they stood looking off at the same place, 
And at the same shape that was always there 
As if it would not ever move or speak. 
And always would be there. ' ' Mary, go now, 
Before the dark that will be coming hides him. 
I am afraid of him out there alone, 
Unless I see him ; and I have forgotten 
What sleep is. Go now — make him look at you — 
And I shall hear him if he stirs or whispers. 
Go! — or I'll scream and bring all Bethany 
To come and make him speak. Make him say 

once 
That he is glad, and God may say the rest. 

[112] 



LAZARUS 

Though He say I shall sleep, and sleep for ever, 
I shall not care for that . . . Go T ^ 



Mary, moving 
Almost as if an angry child had pushed her, 
Went forward a few steps; and having waited 
As long as Martha's eyes would look at hers, 
Went forward a few more, and a few more; 
And so, until she came to Lazarus, 
Who crouched with his face hidden in his hands, 
Like one that had no face. Before she spoke, 
Feeling her sister's eyes that were behind her 
As if the door where Martha stood were now 
As far from her as Egypt, Mary turned 
Once more to see that she was there. Then, softly, 
Fearing him not so much as wondering 
What his first word might be, said, ''Lazarus, 
Forgive us if we seemed afraid of you;" 
And having spoken, pitied her poor speech 
That had so little seeming gladness in it, 
So little comfort, and so little love. 

There was no sign from him that he had heard. 
Or that he knew that she w^as there, or cared 
Whether she spoke to him again or died 
There at his feet. ^'We love you, Lazarus, 
And we are not afraid. The Master said 
We need not be afraid. Will^ou not say 

[113] 



LAZARUS 

To me that you are glad ? Look, Lazarus ! 
Look at my face, and see me. This is Mary." 

She found his hands and held them. They were 

cool. 
Like hers, but they were not so calm as hers. 
Through the white robes in which his friends had 

wrapped him 
"When he had groped out of that awful sleep. 
She felt him trembling and she was afraid. 
At last he sighed ; and she prayed hungrily 
To God that she might have again the voice 
Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now 
The recognition of a living pressure 
That was almost a language. When he spoke, 
Only one word that she had waited for 
Came from his lips, and that word was her name. 

*'I heard them saying, Mary, that He wept 

Before I woke.'' The words were low and shaken, 

Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them 

Was Lazarus; and that would be enough 

Until there should be more . . . "Who made Him 

come, 
That He should weep for me? . . . Was it you, 

Mary?" 
The questions held in his incredulous eyes 
Were more than she would see. She looked away; 
But she had felt them and should feel for ever, 

[114] 



LAZARUS 

She thought, their cold and lonely desperation 

That had the bitterness of all cold things 

That were not cruel. "I should have wept/' he 

said, 
**If I had been the Master. ..." 

Now she could feel 
His hands above her hair — the same black hair 
That once he made a jest of, praising it, 
While Martha's busy eyes had left their work 
To flash with laughing envy. Nothing of that 
Was to be theirs again ; and such a thought 
Was like the flying by of a quick bird 
Seen through a shadowy doorway in the twilight. 
For now she felt his hands upon her head, 
Like weights of kindness : *'I forgive you, Mary. . . . 
You did not know — Martha could not have known — 
Only the Master knew. . . . Where is He now? 
Yes, I remember. They came after Him. 
May the good God forgive Him. ... I forgive 

Him. 
I must ; and I may know only from Him 
The burden of all this. . . . Martha was here — 
But I was not yet here. She was afraid. . . . 
Why did He do it, Mary? Was it— you? 
Was it for you? . . . Where are the friends I 

saw? 
Yes, I remember. They all went away. 
I made them go away. . . . Where is He now ? . . . 

[115] 



LAZARUS 

What do I see down there? Do I see Martha — 
Down by the door ? . . . I must have time for this. ' ' 

Lazarus looked about him fearfully, 

And then again at Mary, who discovered 

Awakening apprehension in his eyes. 

And shivered at his feet. All she had feared 

Was here; and only in the slow reproach 

Of his forgiveness lived his gratitude. 

Why had he asked if it was all for her 

That he was here ? And what had Martha meant ? 

Why had the Master waited? What was coming 

To Lazarus, and to them, that had not come? 

What had the Master seen before He came, 

That He had come so late ? 

*'WhereisHe,Maryr' 
Lazarus asked again. ''Where did He go?" 
Once more he gazed about him, and once more 
At Mary for an answer. ' ' Have they found Him ? 
Or did He go away because He wished 
Never to look into my eyes again? ... 
That, I could understand. . . . Where is He, 
Mary?" 

"I do not know," she said. ''Yet in my heart 
I know that He is living, as you are living — 
Living, and here. He is not far from us. 
He will come back to us and find us all — 

[116] 



LAZARUS 

Lazarus, Martha, Mary — everything — 

All as it was before. Martha said that. 

And He said we were not to be afraid. ' ' 

Lazarus closed his eyes while on his face 

A tortured adumbration of a smile 

Flickered an instant. "All as it was before," 

He murmured wearily. "Martha said that; 

And He said you were not to be afraid . . . 

Not you . . . Not you . . . Why should you be 

afraid ? 
Give all your little fears, and Martha's with them, 
To me ; and I will add them unto mine. 
Like a few rain-drops to Gennesaret. " 

* * If you had frightened me in other ways, 

Not willing it," Mary said, "I should have known 

You still for Lazarus. But who is this? 

Tell me again that you are Lazarus ; 

And tell me if the Master gave to you 

No sign of a new joy that shall be coming 

To this house that He loved. Are you afraid? 

Are you afraid, who have felt everything — 

And seen . . .?" 

But Lazarus only shook his head, 
Staring with his bewildered shining eyes 
Hard into Mary's face. "I do not know, 
Mary," he said, after a long time. 
"When I came back, I knew the Master's eyes 
[117] 



LAZARUS 

Were looking" into mine. I looked at His, 
And there was more in them than I could see. 
At first I could see nothing but His eyes; 
Nothing else anywhere was to be seen — 
Only His eyes. And they looked into mine — 
Long into mine, Mary, as if He knew." 

Mary began to be afraid of words 

As she had never been afraid before 

Of loneliness or darkness, or of death, 

But now she must have more of them or die : 

*'He cannot know that there is worse than death," 

She said. ''And you ..." 

''Yes, there is worse than death." 
Said Lazarus ; ' ' and that was what He knew ; 
And that is what it was that I could see 
This morning in his eyes. I was afraid, 
But not as you are. There is worse than death, 
Mary; and there is nothing that is good 
For you in dying while you are still here. 
Mary, never go back to that again. 
You would not hear me if I told you more, 
For I should say it only in a language 
That you are not to learn by going back. 
To be a child again is to go forward — 
And that is much to know. Many grow old, 
And fade, and go away, not knowing how much 
That is to know. Mary, the night is coming, 

[118] 



LAZARUS 

And there will soon be darkness all around you. 
Let us go down where Martha waits for us, 
And let there be light shining in this house." 

He rose, but Mary would not let him go: 
''Martha, when she came back from here, said only 
That she heard nothing. Ajid have you no more 
For Mary now than you had then for Martha? 
Is Nothing, Lazarus, all you have for me ? 
Was Nothing all you found where you have been? 
If that be so, what is there worse than that — 
Or better — if that be so? And why should you. 
With even our love, go the same dark road over ? ' ' 

'*I could not answer that, if that were so,'* 
Said Lazarus, — ''not even if I were God. 
Why should He care whether I came or stayed, 
If that were so? Why should the Master weep — 
For me, or for the world, — or save Himself 
Longer for nothing? And if that were so, 
Why should a few years* more mortality 
Make Him a fugitive where flight were needless. 
Had He but held his peace and given his nod 
To an old Law that would be new as any ? 
I cannot say the answer to all that; 
Though I may say that He is not afraid, 
And that it is not for the joy there is 
In serving an eternal Ignorance 
Of our futility that He is here. 
[119] 



LAZARUS 

Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing ? 

Is that what you are fearing? If that be so, 

There are more weeds than lentils in your garden. 

And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvest 

May as well have no garden; for not there 

Shall he be gleaning the few bits and orts 

Of life that are to save him. For my part, 

I am again with you, here among shadows 

That will not always be so dark as this; 

Though now I see there 's yet an evil in me 

That made me let you be afraid of me. 

No, I was not afraid — not even of life. 

I thought I was ... I must have time for this; 

And all the time there is will not be long. 

I cannot tell you what the Master saw 

This morning in my eyes. I do not know. 

I cannot yet say how far I have gone, 

Or why it is that I am here again, 

Or where the old road leads. I do not know. 

I know that when I did come back, I saw 

His eyes again among the trees and faces — 

Only His eyes; and they looked into mine — 

Long into mine — long, long, as if He knew." 



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